Archive
Important FTP Server Hardware Upgrade Announcement
We are preparing to upgrade our FTP server hardware to increase stability and allow for the growth of incoming connections as we increase the number of publishers to our network.
The new replacement servers will run alongside the existing servers for some time to allow for a smooth migration of all relevant records. Please note that once all traffic has diverted to the new servers, the old servers will be discontinued.
The process will be completed in 2 phases:
- The first server will be migrated on Monday, May 13, 2013.
- The second server will be migrated soon afterwards. Date to be confirmed.
We do not expect any down time during this process, but any updates will be posted on our ND Connect Intranet site. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact our Publishing IT team.
Thank you for your understanding!
ND Publishing Team
Letter From Our CEO
Dear Customers, Publishers and Partners,
As you are aware, for the past 48 hours the NewspaperDirect network has been experiencing some performance and stability issues. I am sincerely sorry that this situation has had a negative impact on our services, and wanted to share with you what transpired and what we are doing to ensure it does not happen again.
Thanks to the trust you have in our technology and products, the company has been experiencing rapid global growth and needed to upgrade its hardware to accommodate ever-increasing content and traffic demands. These kinds of upgrades have been performed numerous times in the past without incident. However this week, when we attempted to move our multiple databases to new hardware, unexpected problems occurred, causing a one-hour outage on Monday and intermittent slower performance.
To be completely honest with you not all issues have been 100% resolved and so during peak hours performance may be slower than usual for a short while. But we are working around the clock to complete the upgrade and are confident that the network will be performing at high (actually, higher) levels within the next 2 days.
The new technology platform we have deployed will provide a much more scalable, robust and redundant infrastructure for all of our systems going forward.
To minimize the extent of effects which such system upgrades may have in the future, even if we don’t anticipate any noticeable impact, I am putting into place the following additional procedures:
- All future upgrades will be only performed during historically lower usage times, and
- To ensure we are transparent with all our customers, publishers and partners, we are initiating additional communication protocols that will alert you in advance about these kinds of upgrades and changes in the future.
Again, let me sincerely apologize for any problems this disruption to our services may have caused you. And I thank you very much for your patience, support and understanding.
Sincerely,
Alex Kroogman, CEO/CTO
NewspaperDirect Inc.
Subscription System Upgrade Notification – Monday, December 3, 2012
NewspaperDirect will be updating its entire subscription system infrastructure on Monday, December 3, 2012. This upgrade will affect all platforms, including PressDisplay, PressReader and SmartEditions. The purpose is to improve the e-commerce system performance and allow for more features and functionality.
This upgrade will be performed with all appropriate staff monitoring the progress. We don’t expect any major interruptions, but some of the subscription reports may be temporarily unavailable for the duration of the process.
If you experience any other issues, please contact us at publishing@newspaperdirect.com or our 24/7 network operations centre for immediate attention.
Thank you for your understanding and we apologize for any convenience this may cause.
Important Notice: App Store Holiday Shutdown 2012
The following notice was sent by Apple in regards to the App Store holiday shutdown. We recommend that you read carefully and plan appropriately. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us directly at publishing@newspaperdirect.com.
iTunes Connect will be temporarily shut down from Friday, December 21, 2012 to Friday, December 28, 2012, for the winter holidays. During this shutdown, the following functionality will be unavailable:
- Access to iTunes Connect
- Delivery of any apps or updates
Additionally, the following will be delayed:
- Releases scheduled to appear on the App Store for the first time
- Pricing changes scheduled through the interval pricing system in iTunes Connect
- Processing of any Newsstand Atom feeds
We strongly recommend that you do not schedule any pricing changes in iTunes Connect that would take effect between Friday, December 21, 2012 and Friday, December 28, 2012. Pricing changes scheduled to take effect during this date range will not be reflected on the App Store and your app or In-App Purchase will become unavailable for purchase until after the shutdown.
We also recommend that you do not schedule any apps to go live during the shutdown. Releases scheduled with a start date between Friday, December 21, 2012 and Friday, December 28, 2012 will not go live on the App Store until after the shutdown.
Apple News: App Store Price Changes
Apple has announced an App Store price increase for some European customers. The key change is the increase of the lowest paid tier to €0.89, up from the previous tier 1 pricing of €0.79. You can see below the price adjustments.
Apple spokesman Alan Hely said in an email to Macworld UK that “from time to time Apple adjusts prices of products in countries due to changes in exchange rates”.
In addition to increasing paid tier pricing in Mexican Pesos and Danish Kroner, this announcement also included the newly supported currencies in the following eight territories:
- Russia: Ruble (RUB)
- Turkey: Lira (TRY)
- India: Rupee (INR)
- Indonesian: Rupiah (IDR)
- Israel: New Shekel (ILS)
- Saudi Arabia: Riyal (SAR)
- South Africa: Rand (ZAR)
- United Arab Emirates: Dirham (AED)
How Does This Affect You?
As a publisher and/or developer, the current relationship with Apple allows Apple to establish pricing tiers with prices set by them directly. We have to choose one of those price tiers, and Apple reserves the right to change prices on that tier at any time, and prices in the App and iTunes Stores are automatically updated by Apple.
It is important to note that this change does not affect price lists outside of Apple’s jurisdiction, i.e. online subscription prices, Google Marketplace prices, and more. So, do you want to update your pricing program to align this price change or do you wish to keep it status quo?
NewspaperDirect has decided to update its global pricing program on PressDisplay.com and its companion application PressReader to align itself with the new pricing tiers.
The pricing program of all hosted SmartEditions will not be automatically updated, so we suggest that any publishers interested in making changes to their existing pricing structure contact his/her project manager or us directly.
Feel free to reach out to us with any further questions/concerns you may have.
Service Update: Third party outage caused temporary payment processing failures
Earlier today, our partner CashFlows® suffered from a power outage, which resulted in a complete reboot of their servers and an interruption of service. This caused some of our sites to experience temporary payment processing failures. This affected our sites for a period of approximately 5 to 6 hours. They have confirmed that the system is now running and that they will continue to monitor it overnight. For additional information on the incident, you can follow CashFlows® Service Alert.
Our apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused and we thank you for your understanding. Feel free to reach us directly at publishing@newspaperdirect.com if you have any further questions / concerns.
Our Partnership with CashFlows®
NewspaperDirect has been working with CashFlows® for a number of years now. This partnership is used to enable our sites to support a wide range of payment channels including, online, mobile and mail & telephone orders. They are used to support sites using the following currencies: Euro, GBP, NZD and AUD.
Update on Saturday’s Brief Service Interruption
We identified Saturday’s incident to be a hardware failure in one of our server clusters. The recovery systems and back-up procedures kicked in immediately, but the transition unfortunately slowed down the connection until the issue was fully resolved. We have therefore reviewed the rollover procedures and added additional redundancies to these procedures based on the behaviour of the systems during this incident.
Once again, we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Don’t hesitate to contact us at publishing@newspaperdirect.com if you have any further questions / concerns.
Update: Brief Service Interruption
Earlier today, at approximately 13:00 UTC, some of our sites experienced a short interruption in service. The issue was identified as a connection slowdown to one of our database management systems. Simply put, this system enables communication between our database and various applications. The situation was rectified at approximately 13:30 UTC and all affected sites were reactivated and restored shortly after.
We are still investigating the root cause of this slowdown and we will make sure to put in place preventative measures moving forward.
Our apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused and we thank you for your understanding. Feel free to reach us directly at publishing@newspaperdirect.com if you have any further questions / concerns.
PressReader version 3.1.1 for iOS released
PressReader version 3.1.1 for iOS is now available for download from the iTunes App Store and brings with it significant improvements in performance!
To start, the addition of a brand new page turning algorithm will provide a much more enjoyable and fluid reading experience by allowing users to swipe to the next page of a publication prior to the current page completing its rendering process. While the improvement can be experienced on all iPad models, it is most noticeable on the iPad 3. Users will be able to enjoy the clarity of retina display with the performance they have come to expect from PressReader. In addition to the new page turning algorithm, PressReader 3.1.1 has made improvements to its SmartFlow horizontal reading stream and overall stability.
All new SmartEdition iOS applications will be built using this baseline. To upgrade your existing iOS app, please contact your project manager or email us directly!
Important Change to Email Templates: No Spamming Policy
Most companies who are actively engaging with their end users by email have come across this issue at some point. So have we. Even though all of our email communications sent on behalf of our publishing partners are compliant with various national anti-spam legislations, we have recently encountered an issue with some of our email servers being blacklisted in spam filters. These filters work on an automatic basis. As a result, we are now implementing across the board a strong No Spamming Policy. One of the main objectives is of course to ensure that recipients of email alerts, welcome emails and/or notification emails be happy readers who have requested the email communication rather than angry ones.
How does this affect your site?
Increased visibility of the Subscribe button: We want to make sure that your readers subscribe to the email service. Please work with your Account Manager to ensure that whenever your reader visits your SmartEdition site, the option to Subscribe to email alerts is visible and inviting.
Mandatory and visible Unsubscribe button: We are now making the option to Unsubscribe mandatory at the footer of every email sent by our email servers. It allows the reader to unsubscribe from the email alert service if they are no longer interested. This will prevent the reader to be frustrated and report our services as spam.
What other steps are we taking?
- We will continue to investigate spam complaints as soon as received
- Unsubscribe requests will be handled by the system automatically
- We have implemented new measures to ensure that our servers are set up for detailed logging and can accurately track any reports
- We will continue to monitor the blacklists religiously and immediately communicate with them if any of our IPs are identified
If you have any questions about this new policy or wish to discuss it further with one of us, please don’t hesitate to contact us at publishing@newspaperdirect.com.
Thank you for your understanding and cooperation!
